Skip to content

Author Insights

SIDETRACKED: Laurel & Glenwood cover

Getting Sidetracked with Santa Cruz Trains

Thank you to everyone who came to my talk on March 25 at the Felton Branch Library, “Off Track in Scotts Valley: Exploring the curious absence of railroads in Scotts Valley.” It was definitely one of my stranger talks, considering it was actually about why a railroad wasn’t built there rather than the history of a current or former railroad line. A YouTube version of the talk should be available sometime in late June. Most of… Read More »Getting Sidetracked with Santa Cruz Trains

Holiday Lighting Along Main Street, Watsonville, 1920s [Santa Cruz Public Libraries]
Holiday Lighting along Main Street, Watsonville, 1920s [Courtesy Santa Cruz Public Libraries – colorized using MyHeritage]

Out of Isolation and Into the World Beyond

For the past four years, I have been working on editing and publishing Ronald G. Powell’s mostly lost manuscripts into The History of Rancho Soquel Augmentation trilogy. Throughout the course of doing this, I did not forget about my first passion: Santa Cruz Trains. Indeed, editing Parts 2 and 3 reminded me of what I had set aside to finish Powell’s work, but it also gave me inspiration to move beyond what I had originally… Read More »Out of Isolation and Into the World Beyond

Speeder riders visiting the abandoned Loma Prieta mill, ca 1925
Speeder riders visiting the abandoned Loma Prieta mill, ca 1925. Photo by Bert Stoodley. Woods Mattingley Collection, Aptos History Museum.

The Rise and Fall of the Molino Timber Company

Editing the three volumes of The History of Rancho Soquel Augmentation by Ronald G. Powell has been an unexpected journey for me that has had some major highs and major lows. As I wrap up editing the third and final volume of the series, Powell did what he has often done to me over the past three years and thrown a curve ball. In this instance, it has to do with the history of the Molino… Read More »The Rise and Fall of the Molino Timber Company

Molino Timber Company workers on a bridge above Hinckley Gulch
Molino Timber Company workers on a bridge above Hinckley Gulch, 1910s. [Aptos Museum]

On wrapping up a trilogy

My journey from being introduced to Ronald G. Powell’s forgotten magnum opus on the history of Rancho Soquel Augmentation in May 2019 and publishing the final book derived from it—The Shadow of Loma Prieta—this autumn has been long with many unexpected turns. When Stan Stevens sent me scans of the first-draft manuscript that Powell had donated to the UC Santa Cruz McHenry Library in the late 1990s, I almost immediately set aside the work I… Read More »On wrapping up a trilogy

Manresa Trestle at La Selva Beach

Much To Do About Everything

Happy New Year! 2022 marks the ten-year anniversary since I started the Santa Cruz Trains blog on Blogger. Since that time, simple irregular blog posts morphed into weekly posts, daily Instagram photos, and two Santa Cruz Trains books, all culminating in the founding of Zayante Publishing in October 2020 alongside the release of Ronald G. Powell’s The Tragedy of Martina Castro (Amazon link). It has been an incredibly wild ride and it is nowhere near done yet.… Read More »Much To Do About Everything